There is little in life that makes one
as hard and indomitable as good genes and good upbringing. It can truly
turn one into a pinnacle of their species. Dagon Tong is a prime example
of this, though neither his genes nor his upbringing were what the
galaxy would consider unequalled. His parents were an odd and ill
fitting couple, his father a mercenary and Mandalorian, his mother an
intellectual and a geologist who met once and produced a child. Neither
was willing to take on the burden of the child, the father having too
many wars to fight, and the mother too many minerals to discover. And so
Dagon Tong was left in an orphanage on Carida as a newborn.

Though Carida was not yet the Imperial
training ground for its storm trooper program, it was still a harsh,
seedy planet and produced the same caliber individual. Youth gangs were
rather common, and thievery the route to survival. Tong proved to be an
excellent survivalist, and prospered enough to leave the planet.
Unfortunately, his education was weak at best, and he ended up following
the same path that his father had. Soldiering paid well, even before
Geonosis, and murder and kidnapping paid far better. He operated
primarily in the outer rim for the first half of his life, and a great
deal of his time was spent on Tatoonie and Nar Shadda, under the employ
of the Hutts.

He was not particular to which Hutt he
worked for, so long as it paid his expenses, and on one occasion, was
contracted by Torba the Hutt to murder a rival on Nar Shadda. The
ensuing attack not only killed the target, but managed to remove most of
the target's advisors and allies. In retaliation against Torba, Nickor
Grazd, the advisor for the now dead Snobo, unknowingly hired Tong to
kill Torba. It was this contract that was life altering for the young
mercenary. The contract called not for just the death of the enemy, but
for it to be overt and public, at blaster point to shock Grazd's enemies
into inaction while he worked to solidify his own claim to Shodo's
empire. The young Tong was to aid another, more seasoned mercenary in an
assault on the Torba compound. That man was all but legendary in the
circles that Dagon traveled, the Mandalorian Kal Skirata. On their first
meeting as independent contractors, neither cared for the other much,
but an uneasy respect was forged from their very first meeting. Skirata
had years of experience, and knew tactics that simply outmatched those
of most of the security forces he faced. Tong held a ruthlessness that
few men have yet to match, and the capability to learn quickly from
example. At the end of the contract, with Torba laying charred across
his own throne, the two men shook hands and parted ways.

As the galaxy continued its long road to
destabilization, Dagon Tong would eventually find more and more of his
contracts coming from a shadowy group inside the Republic.
Assassinations became almost his sole source of income, and most of
those assassinated were Jedi as they performed missions. On more than
one occasion, he found himself hunting with none other than Kal Skirata,
who held a certain lack of love for the Jedi in ways that only a
Mandalorian could. It was well after the older soldier's wife had left
him and taken the children with her, and left the man an alcoholic and
nearly broken. Dagon Tong did not so much as rekindle the will to live
in the man, but managed to keep him alive on several assignments. One of
the more notable instances occurred on Alderaan, where Skirata and Tong
were both injured in the assassination of a particular diplomat under
the protection of both standard bodyguards and a Jedi Knight. The
initial assault was bloody, and though well planned tactically, did not
go as foreseen. Skirata was hit early in combat from his post in the
back of the speeder that he had used as a hide for the initial shot. The
guardsmen of the diplomat were relentless in pressing the assault,
leaving Kal perforated with blaster wounds. Between the old Mandalorian
adoptee's return fire, and the anti armor rocket launched by his partner
into the center of the group, the principle target was finally removed,
and left the security force dazed and lying on the landing pad. Tong
managed to make his way to the controls immediately after, using the
confusion and incapacitated state of the security detail to his
advantage, but only after firing a single round through the head of the
Jedi responsible for the first warning. Skirata had no illusions as to
the motivations of his partner, and why he had survived, but even
through the blatant disregard of the Mandalorian traditions that the man
held so dear, the respect for the younger man increased.

Though there was no way for the Republic
to find the names of the "terrorists" involved in the incident, the Jedi
were still sent to investigate. Skirata never came up in the
investigation, in face or reputation, no one had seen the man on planet.
Dagon Tong on the other hand became a very hunted man, to the point that
he could not take a contract without seeing a light saber at some point
in the job. It nearly cost him his life on several occasions, though the
one that left him the facial scars was by far the worse. Having been
hired to kidnap the daughter of one of the nobles of the planet Naboo
directly preceding their planetary elections, the Jedi caught up with
him. Between the men retained by both the target family, and the Naboo
security forces, and the Jedi, the twenty-six year old soldier of
fortune was captured by the least favorable of the three. The noble
ordered Tong tortured until he revealed the names and locations of those
who had hired him. The torture was at first basic, sleep and food
deprivation, and hourly beatings to be followed by time spent in the
bacta tank to keep him alive for more beatings. When that yielded
nothing but the broken hands and stained clothing of the interrogators,
they moved on with more advanced methods. Tong was smuggled off planet
to Corellia, where he was placed in the care of a very specialized
doctor. Gone were the beatings, and at high expense to his captors, he
under went some of the cruelest treatment imaginable. The mild parts of
his days were the electro shock treatments to his nerve bundles. The
worst were the sessions in which he was cut into, and while under the
influence of drugs to both heighten the sensation and make him more
willing to talk, suffer burns and direct damage to most parts of his
body. The doctor managed to keep Tong wreathing for two standard weeks
without respite. In the end, a laxness slipped over the doctor and his
staff, their patient gradually becoming more docile, more predictable.
That laxness cost them their lives. On his last day of captivity,
instead of docilely climbing from the bacta tank as he had done for the
majority of his time there, he attacked the guard escorting him.
Surprise more than anything gave the weakened mercenary the upper hand,
and once he had a blaster in hand, he wasted no time with compassion in
the execution of his tormentors, though there was no drawn out torture
of those who had scarred him. All would have been for not, as he lacked
any manner to retrieve the funds he had stashed away, and had no safe
haven on Corellia when the Corellian Defense Force came looking for him
in connection with the murders except for an Ordo finding him.

Sudara Ordo was a survivor or the
Mandalorian Massacres, and was saved only by Tong's father, Nonda Fett.
Ordo had sworn on the day of the execution that he would repay the debt,
and at least tell the son of the father's death. His search for Dagon
had led him from Coruscant to Naboo and ultimately to Corellia. The
Mandalorian found Tong half dead, and lying in an alley on the seedier
end of Treasure Ship Row. Even delirious and wounded, Tong mounted a
defense against what he saw as a new aggressor. His blaster went dead on
the first shot, and that single shot tore a chunk out of Ordo's helmet
in a glancing blow, and the hand-to-hand battle that ensued ended only
when Dagon's wounds reopened and blood loss left him unconscious. Two
weeks later, he awoke on the assault transport that served as Ordo's
base of operations. Though the young mercenary showed no outward signs
of emotion at the news that his father had been executed by the allies
that he had fought for, the Confederacy of Independent Systems, the
mental strain represented the final crystallization of the man's mind
and ideals. He had never been in contact with his father, but knew that
something was owed, if only for the will to survive, the almost
ingrained talent for war, and idea that good service was rewarded by
death to those who had rendered it was disgusting. The mercenary
believed in being paid for work done, and had hunted those who had
claimed to have lost the fortune owed him.

A week later, Dagon Tong departed Ordo's
ship, and put boots back on the cityscape of Coruscant. There was no
ceremonial passing of his father's belongings to him, no eulogy, just
the shake of hands between warriors, and he moved on to re arm and re
equip. There was an instant shift in the contracts that Tong would
accept, his focus coming to bear on the Confederation, and taking on any
job against them, regardless of the risk to him. He still lacked much of
what it meant to be Mandalorian, his hatred pushing him forward and
making him a colder individual. By the end of his mercenary stint, many
would come to describe him as having been carbon froze on the inside.
There was no thawing of his emotional state, only purpose in every
action he took.

The clone wars gave him a new way to
focus that hatred. The Grand Army of the Republic was almost entirely
clone troopers borne of the archetype given by Jango Fett. Even before
the army had been delivered to the Republic, Tong had linked up with
Skirata once more. This time however, he was used almost as a check
against the Kaminoan creators of the clones. While they looked on
Skirata and his favored Nulls as "defective", Tong simply scared them.
He aided in the instruction of the Nulls in basic and advanced tactics,
and taught through many examples that ruthlessness towards an enemy was
the only true way to survive multiple engagements. As distasteful as
Skirata might have found some of the younger man's tactics, the respect
borne between them almost a decade earlier could not be cast aside. And
the fact that Tong protected many of the nulls in their early stages of
training from the standard clones, regardless of the fact that it was
simply because the Null units needed every null available for simple
numbers. The time spent with the Nulls ultimately ended in Tong learning
of his heritage in a much more full way than Sudara's brief summary
relating to his father's death. Though it did not quite penetrate the
cold, hateful shell that Dagon had grown around himself, it did inspire
a sense of loyalty, originally to the clones he helped train. After the
Republic truly joined war against the Confederation, and the first of
the Nulls fell, Dagon Tong requested that Skirata use him as the
replacement. One of the first non-clones to serve the Grand Army of the
Republic that was not a Jedi, he performed admirably. He was often
assigned to Delta and Omega squads when the Nulls were hunting for the
head scientist in an attempt to slow their rapid aging, as even as a
loyal compatriot, Dagon Tong was cold towards the predicament of his
squad mates, and preferred to fight solo against the confederacy.
Slowly, he became noticed by the official Imperial officers.

There was no time in the regular
Imperial military served by Dagon Tong, instead, it was the eye of the
Commando division of the Imperial Stormtroopers that found the now aging
soldier to be interesting. Because of his status, their tactics and
tests were far more stringent than had they pulled from the standard
storm trooper pool. The first order of business for the recruiters was
to ensure that their targeted recruit could truly live up to the
unspoken reputation he had built. Two separate attempts were made on
Dagon's life as nothing more than a test. The first time a single
assassin was dispatched, and attempted the subtle route of poisoning
him, but made the mistake of having a lavish meal sent to Tong's
quarters at the barracks. The meal went untouched and the assassin lost
patience and tried a more direct approach. A pneumatic dart gun, the
dart poisoned was the second choice, but through simple awareness, and
seeing the reflection of the weapon in a panel as he passed, Dagon was
made aware, allowing him to turn and shoot the man directly in the
forehead and continue on. The second attempt was an actual team of men,
who attempted a much more blunt approach, of breaching his room and
clearing it. The fact that they wore low light enhancing gear cost them
their lives as their uninvited intrusion caused the lights in his
quarters to flair, a defense he had set up solely to alert him of
intruders while he was gone or asleep. The blaster fire ended less than
fifteen seconds after it had begun.

Satisfied that the man he intended to
recruit was intelligent and skillful enough to survive the assignments,
the Storm Commandos contacted the man through clandestine recruiters. A
psychological profile was done, revealing nothing but his hatred for the
Confederation. That hatred was the hook the army used to inspire loyalty
to the Empire in the mercenary. As operations progressed in the Storm
Commandos, and Dagon Tong saw more action as a direct agent of the
Galactic Empire, his hatred slowly shifted towards any who would stand
against the government he fought for. His advancement through the ranks
of the army was agonizingly slow, as the former soldier of fortune's
resume was varied, and he was not trusted easily by even those who
shared foxholes with him. His ruthlessness was not helpful in earning
that trust, but it did eventually out weigh the mistrust, and saw him
promoted to Captain and leading troops on Mantoonie and Fest. Both
governments were proving slow to join fully with the Empire, and the
Imperial Security Bureau and Intelligence agencies had not managed to
infiltrate far enough to push either of the planet's leadership to join.
Storm Commando assistance was grudgingly requested by the heads of each
mission. Mantoonie saw a direct assault on the planet's parliament, the
now forty five year old Dagon Tong leading a small unit that infiltrated
and struck leaders on both sides of the isle and at a political dinner
meeting. Five members of parliament were killed, three of which were in
favor of joining the Empire, all gunned down by these "unidentifiable
terrorists opposed to the joining of the Galactic Empire." Mantoonie's
parliament voted for full assimilation the next week, all but begging
the fleet that occupied the sector for protection against these
terrorists, since the joining was overwhelmingly opposed by the majority
of the parliament before the attack, the politicians feared what the
next level would be if they did not stomp these terrorists out, and
needed the Empire to accomplish it. A full regiment of storm troopers
was deployed to ensure the planet's security, with the over arching
thanks of the now ineffectual parliament.

Fest saw a similar set of tactics
employed, and a similar call for help. In this instance, the planet was
controlled more by a direct democracy, the people themselves voting as
to whether or not their planet would join the Empire. Two votes and been
close, but given negative responses. The commander of the mission to
Fest again called for the aid of the Storm Commandos to bring about the
populace to an enlightened decision. Dagon Tong was again called into
the system, though this time the actual mission was handled differently.
As the majority of the voting for the capital city was done in the
sports arena on the weekend, the stadium was rigged with high-powered
demolitions charges. At maximum capacity, the stadium held several
thousand people, and the body count was never finalized when the dust of
the explosion cleared. Under the impression that this attack was to keep
the general public from voting to join the Empire, the planet requested
Imperial aid in securing the next voting session. With Imperial aid, the
voting went off without a hitch, and over ninety percent of voters had
requested that Fest join with the Empire.

These two success in particular saw the
middle aged warrior promoted to the rank of Major, putting him in
command of the Ringali Sector special operations.